Study a Master of Teaching.

Both a Master of Teaching and a Bachelor of Education are what we refer to as Initial Teacher Education degrees. They are designed to specifically meet the requirements to register as a teacher with the Teachers Registration Board of South Australia. The difference between them is that a Master of Teaching degree is 2-years full-time equivalent (or 1.5 years in accelerated mode), and is a postgraduate degree requiring a minimum of a 3-year degree in a recognised area of study to be accepted into the program. A Bachelor of Education is a 4-year full-time equivalent degree. 

A Master of Education is focussed on research into education and is considered continuing professional education. It does not qualify you to register as a teacher.

This is variable between states, schools, and time in the profession. A starting teacher with the Department of Education earns approximately $75,000pa with a salary range of ~$75,000 - $108,000pa. Lead teachers currently earn up to $122,000pa.

A Master of Teaching allows you to apply expertise from your undergraduate studies and life experience, and change careers to become a teacher in a shorter space of time rather than starting from scratch at undergraduate level.

Australia relies on its teachers to provide a future for our children and their influence on the future of our country is undeniable. If you've considered teaching before, or area looking for a career change, now is the time to act. 

In the first instance think about how you would like to work with your areas of interest and expertise with the children in your class. Early childhood and primary teachers work with the whole curriculum but stay with a particular group of children for the year. Secondary teachers specialise in subject areas, often working with a larger number of students

Early Childhood Education focuses on teaching children from birth-8, which means working with babies and young children in Early Childhood services, 3–5-year-old children in preschool and 5–8-year-old children in schools. You can expect to have a Professional Experience placement in all of these settings. Early Childhood Education degrees require you to diversify your teaching to enable you to effectively work with and educate babies as well as children in a school setting. 

Primary Education teachers predominantly work in Primary School settings with children in years 3 – 6. As a classroom based teacher you will work across all curriculum areas, however, you will have the opportunity to register as a teacher with a specialisation area such as Health and Physical Education, Science and Visual Arts to name a few.

Teachers in Secondary Education work with students in years 7 – 12, commonly referred to as the middle and senior years of schooling. Studying Secondary Education requires you to specialise in at least two curriculum areas enabling you to teach these specifically as a registered teacher in secondary settings. 

In an Early Childhood degree, you can expect to have a Professional Experience placement in birth-5, and in school, and students need to demonstrate excellence in teaching in both of these settings. Placements are either 35 or 40-days in length and are full-time placements for 30-days each time (30 days + 5 visits and 30 days + 10 visits).

Placements in the Primary and Secondary degrees are also in your subject area of your specialisation (studied during your degree at undergraduate level and determined by your undergraduate degree if studying a Master of Teaching). The first professional experience placement runs for 5 weeks (5 visits + 4 weeks), the second for a total of 8 weeks, usually presented as 10 visits plus 6 weeks full time. Some variation may occur, but a minimum of 65 days must be successfully completed. The two placements are undertaken at different school sites and require you to teach your two specialisation areas. 

Students will need to have sound literacy and numeracy skills to effectively teach children in education settings. This includes excellent levels of verbal and written English including spelling and grammar. International students will need to meet our English language proficiency requirements for admission, which is an overall IELTS score of 7.0 (with 7.0 speaking, writing, reading and listening).

Students can expect to write formal assignments, presentations and education papers in each topic of their degree. Sound organisational skills and excellence in academic literacy will be important for maintaining success.

All students need to complete and meet the benchmark for the Literacy and Numeracy Tests in Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE) before they can Graduate. These tests, a separate test for each, are managed externally to the university by the Australian Council for Education Research. Attempting the tests incurs a fee. All students have 3 opportunities to pass each test.